The College Solutions Blog

November 25, 2013

The prospect of rejection is one of the most stressful aspects of the college admission process. In reality, however, most students don’t have to fear rejection. In its annual survey of college freshmen, UCLA always seems to find that at least 75% of students are accepted into their first-choice school. Today, I wanted to share a study, conducted by Inside Higher...

October 10, 2012

Today I’m passing along a fascinating list that comes from Harvard Law School. The list you see below includes the 261 colleges and universities where members of the Class of 2013 law school students come from. Michelle Kretzschmur, the creator of Do-It-Yourself College Rankings sent me the link to the list because she knows how strongly I believe that students...

August 3, 2012

The 2012-2013 college admission season hasn’t even officially started, but I’ve already been hearing from parents who are stressed about paying for elite schools that are on their teenagers’ lists. Some of these parents believe that they have an obligation to incur huge debt if their children get accepted into the most prestigious schools. Here’s my worst example: Last spring...

July 26, 2012

Do you need to graduate from an Ivy League school or other ultra elite college to earn the highest salaries? Many families believe that graduates who can put a school like Princeton or Yale on their resume will fare significantly better financially than smart students who end up earning their degrees from elsewhere. In a famous study, two economists tackled...

May 15, 2012

Today I am reprinting an article written by Lee Bierer, a friend of mine, who is a nationally syndicated columnist and independent college counselor in North Carolina. Lee writes the Charlotte Observer’s weekly Countdown to College column, which is syndicated nationally to McClatchy Newspapers. I asked Lee if I could reprint her column because it reinforces what I’ve been saying...

April 30, 2012

May 1 is college decision day. That’s the day each year when many colleges and universities across the country require high school seniors to make a final decision about where they will attend school in the fall. Seniors must notify their No. 1 pick by putting down a deposit to secure their spot in the next freshman class. I’d love...

April 17, 2012

I’ve been receiving some fascinating comments lately that were triggered by recent posts that shared the agony of students who aimed for the Ivies and other elite schools and got spurned or who couldn’t afford the tab. If you missed the posts, here they are: Should You Blow the Budget on Cornell? The Odds of Getting Off a Wait List...

April 12, 2012

If you don’t have the cash, is an Ivy League school or any other university that the college rankings gods worship worth the cost? Affluent families have been asking me that lately. Yesterday afternoon, for instance, I got a call from a dad in Maryland, who wanted my opinion about the three schools on his daughter’s short list. The father...

April 4, 2012

I recently took a look at The Princeton Review’s latest lists of America’s most popular dream colleges and I immediately saw a problem. Before I explain why, check out the dream colleges that teenagers and parents cited most often. Teenagers’ Dream Colleges Stanford University Harvard University New York University Princeton University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Yale University UCLA University of...

February 2, 2012

Claremont McKenna College recently announced that it had been sending inflated SAT scores to US News since 2005. According to news accounts, the vice president and dean of admissions admitted inflating the scores and resigned. The college’s critical reading scores were inflated by an average of 17 points and the math scores were bumped up by an average of 10.5...